The Key
by Goddess Isa
Summary: Leia searches for answers to her past.  Don't know who Leia is?  You'll have to read to find out then, won't you?


TITLE: The Key   
AUTHOR: Goddess Isa  
EMAIL: goddessisa@aol.com  
SUMMARY: Leia searches for answers to her past. Don't know who Leia is? You'll have to read to find out then, won't you?  
SPOILER: Season Four rumours & The Prom a LITTLE  
DISTRIBUTION: Sandee, of course - My site - http://planetslaythis.homestead.com- Crystal and Butterfly if they want it - A Soul's Redemption - Anyone else - sure, just email me & lmk where it's going - I like seeing my name in print =)  
FEEDBACK: Please, I'd hate to have to Slay for it. =P  
RATING: TV-PG  
DISCLAIMER: I don't own these characters, Joss Whedon does. If he ever decides to give them to me, that would be nice. =)   
  
  
  
There's a picture of the three of them on my desk. Willow, Xander, and my mother. It's been there since I got the desk sixteen years ago. It was way too big a desk for a four year old, but Giles was always old fashioned and thought every young girl should have a roll-top desk to write at. I loved it because it gave me a place to hide things. Diaries, candy bars, and my pictures.   
  
Pictures of Mom, pictures of Dad.   
  
I guess I'm lucky I have any pictures of Dad at all. They're all from before he was turned, of course. Quite old, yellowed and wrinkled. And his hair is still brown in the photos, not bleached blonde like I'm told it was when I was conceived.   
  
It's hard for me to process everything. But from what I've basically pulled out of Willow and Cordelia is that my mother loved Angel. He broke up with her to try and give her the life she couldn't have with someone "like him", so she deliberately started dating Spike just to spite him. They fell in love and got married. He killed her the day I was born.   
  
That's all I know, and I'm not sure I want to know more. Willow says the answers are in my mother's diaries. And while I'm sure they are, I don't know where the diaries are hidden.   
  
The only person who does is Giles, and even though he raised me, and was the best father I ever could have had, he won't let me know the truth.   
  
I've been a Slayer for four years now. I live in my mother's house in Sunnydale and I study with my mother's best friend as my Watcher. Giles tells me this family connection is usually forbidden by the Council, but there weren't many rules my mother followed when it came to Slaying and they were warned early on by Giles that I would be just like her.   
  
I'd like to think I am.   
  
I'd like to think that when she looks down on me from Heaven, she sees my long blonde ponytail, the shiny pink lipstick, the butterflies still tacked on the wall in the bedroom, and she sees someone she's proud of.   
  
Angel says that she is. He says she speaks to him, tells him through his dreams what he should be doing. He's been living in Sunnydale since I was three, I think. He and Giles seem to have lots of issues, because even though Angel trains with me and helps me research, I don't think I've ever seen them speak.   
  
Willow says I'm just like my mother, in every possible way. When I was little, she would brush the hair out of my eyes and smile. "You are just like her Leia." She'd say it with such sincerity, I believed it. She once told me that right after I was born - Willow's a doctor and she delivered me - that Mom cried and kissed me and then she handed me over to Willow, my Godmother, telling her to watch over me while she battled some demon. No one knew where she was going or who she was fighting.   
  
She went to the factory, and she battled Spike.   
  
I don't know why he felt the need to turn bad all of a sudden, but for some reason, he did. He killed my mother, and Angel killed him. Case closed.   
Or is it?   
  
I have another picture, though I've kept it hidden since I was four, sixteen long years. It's of my mother and Angel, at her senior prom. My mother is beaming at him and he appears to be whispering into her ear. It's the most perfect picture I've ever seen.   
  
But all the perfect pictures and Slaying stories in the world can't tell me what I need to know. Why did she marry Spike? What made her think she loved him? Why did she choose to keep me when she knew I would be a Slayer, face the same destiny as she faced?   
  
I take everything out of the desk, one item at a time, and pack it away. We're selling the house so that I can get an apartment with Xander and Willow's daughter and Amy's daughter. What a trio we'll be. Willow says it reminds her of when she and my mom were roommates in college. I wonder if my mom had a hard time with math the way I do. If she knew what she wanted to major in.   
  
If she ever suspected the end was near.   
  
I take the picture off the desk and kiss it before wrapping it in bubble wrap and sticking it in the box. For some reason, I'm suddenly angry and I kick the desk. I keep kicking it and then I hear a click.   
  
A click.   
  
Inside the desk.   
  
I opened the left door, searching the empty cabinet with my hands. And I find it.   
  
A key.   
  
"I see you've found what you were looking for."   
  
Giles is standing in my doorway, leaning on his cane, smiling at me.   
  
I meet his eyes. "Did I?"   
  
"You've always wondered how to get into the liquor chest."   
  
I got up and I hugged him. I had my answers.


End file.
